'PetroKoch': an art project for the Metropolitan Museum

As David Koch gets his name on the Met's new plaza, why not add Detroit's pile of his tar-sands sludge as an installation?

David Koch, one of the billionaire Koch brothers, with wife Julia. The Kochs have supported groups like the Heartland Institute that seek to undermine the established science on climate change. Photograph: Andrew H Walker/Getty

In the spirit of repurposing, recycling, and synergy, might the Met acknowledge Koch's further contributions by moving the ever-growing black mound of tar-like petroleum coke, owned by Koch and his brother Charles through their company Koch Carbon and currently dumped in Detroit's Assumption Park, to the Met's new Plaza? What more fitting tribute to the Brothers Koch than the gooey byproducts of their billion-dollar industry? What a stunning salute to the American supply chain; another Koch Brother, William, owns Oxbow Corporation, which deals in … petrocoke, a long-lasting reminder that Koch family values have real value.

Looking to extend their legacy into perpetuity (such by-products requiring a very long time to break down), the brothers could, when their time comes, be laid to rest in this coke-catafalque, retitled the "PetroKoch". Their tomb will be reliably waterproof, important for the preservation of this park during the rapid rise of sea levels, mixed with catastrophic weather changes caused by our Pleistocene-era carbon levels, which might well be flooding Manhattan's Upper East Side in the future. The Kochs will be coated, covered, protected, by the very substance that has enriched them, while bringing added warmth to our environment.

Local artists could be shoveled an allotment of the goo, the better to make fashionably dark, severe works of art. Politically focused photographers who document environmental disasters in remote third-world countries, to which this stuff is shipped as the cheapest and dirtiest fuel known to man, can take their snaps here in the neighborhood. Such a plaza would also clarify the Met's awareness of political art and political theatre, a brash contemporary gesture to show concern for the world outside our island.

While we carbon-neutralize via our bikes and subways, we acknowledge the dark forces accumulating elsewhere. Thus Koch Plaza would be a metaphor (the art world loves metaphor) of first world environmentalism trumped by first world capitalism; this fuel is too filthy for us, so we export it to other, poorer countries who can't afford our bespoke environmentalism.

Such a monument looks to the future, as much more petrocoke will be coming our way if the Keystone XL pipeline brings us western Canada's oilsands petroleum, liberating us from the shame of middle east oil. Canada currently has a mere 79.8m tons of "the dirtiest residue from the dirtiest oil on earth … a waste by-product that is costly and inconvenient to store, but effectively costs nothing to produce", in the words of scientists following such things.

"The renovated plaza will also feature tree-shaded allées (in place of the current trees that have limited lifespans and low environmental benefits due to their inadequate planting conditions), permanent and temporary seating areas, and entirely new, energy-efficient and diffused nighttime lighting."

The PetroKoch will certainly not have a limited lifespan, though it might ironically contribute to the shortened lifespans of quite a few in the neighborhood. The art world loves irony.